The 10 th and 11 th chapters of the Gospel of Matthew are tough going. They’re full of violence and, for those that choose to follow Jesus, intimations of violence. Perhaps most famously there’s Matthew 10:34-36: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.”
It’s a head-turning surprise if you’ve been following with any closeness at all. In what sense is following Jesus easy? The VIDEO below is of a sermon where I try to grapple with this idea.
I had wanted to start by playing one of the toughest rock songs of all time, John Lennon’s “Cold Turkey,” especially the song’s end, where he conveys with frightening groans and screams what it’s like to try to kick heroine addiction “cold turkey.” The congregation was spared from the gut-wrenching experience when our tech person extraordinaire, Daniel Chavez, informed me that since we were live-streaming the service, we didn’t have the rights to use that song.